Amputee Roger Baxter says it's just not his time.
The Vietnam veteran, a Colorado Department of Transportation employee, lost his leg in October when he was hit by tractor-trailer going 70 mph on I-70. But he survived, and after almost a month in a coma and 13 operations, he’s adjusting to life with a wheelchair and crutches.
Then Tuesday, he returned home from getting a haircut to find an armed intruder inside his home.
Baxter yelled at the intruder to get out, he told KUSA-TV in Denver. Instead of leaving, though, Baxter said the man tried to kill him.
As he fought the invader with his crutch, the gunman fired a shot that went through Baxter's cell phone in his shirt pocket, which slowed the bullet before it hit him in the chest, next to his heart.
"I thought he was probably dead after I heard the shot," his wife, Deb Baxter, told KUSA.
"There he is trying to call 911, he says, 'Get me a towel, I'm bleeding,'" his wife said to KUSA. "It's like, 'Oh, my God.'"
"It hit me in the cell phone, went through the cell phone, and projected down and grazed me," Roger Baxter told KUSA.
He was treated at a hospital and released. Police say two juveniles were arrested, one believed to be the suspect and the other a lookout. Their identities were not immediately released.
But Baxter was released by the hospital, which treated him and declared him to be in good shape.
"It's not my time," said Baxter. "It wasn't my time when I got hit by that semi in October.”
"We're going to have to get him a titanium suit so nothing happens to him," his wife told KUSA.